Includes bibliographical references and index

Introductory essay: Perestroika and Stalinism, 1988 -- pt. 1. Stalin's rise in the party: 1. Stalin as a party chief: Before 1917. In 1917. Commissar of Nationalities. In the Civil War. Lenin's support. General Secretary. The death of Lenin. Lenin's "Testament". Stalin in 1923-1924 ; 2. The fight with the opposition: Disputes in the Bolshevik Party. Trotsky. Disputes in the Politburo. The Trotskyist opposition. Zinoviev and Kamenev. The "new opposition". The deaths of Frunz and Dzerzhinsnky. The united opposition, 1926-1927. Bukharin. The "right deviation" ; 3. Mistakes and crimes in collectivization and industrialization: Cooperatives and collectivization in agriculture. Grain procurement difficulties, 1927-1928. Distortions and mistakes in collectivization. Collectivization and persecution of the Orthodox Church. "Liquidation of the Kulaks as a class". Administrative repression in the countryside, 1932-1933. Internal passports. Shortcomings and mistakes in industrialization ; 4. New crimes by Stalin in the early thirties: Soviet power and the "bourgeois" intelligentsia. Political trials of 1928-1930. The "Industrial Party" and "Union Bureau" trials, 1931. Fraudulence of the trials of 1928-1931. Behind the scenes of the trials. Mass repression against the intelligentsia and specialists. The end of NEP. Repression inside the party. The suicide of Nadezhda Alliluyeva. Repression in the social sciences and literature. Stalin's policies in the International Working Class Movement. Beginning of the Stalin cult. Bukharin in the early thirties. Trotsky in the early thirties -- pt. 2. Stalin's usurpation of power, and the Great Terror: 5. The Kirov assassination and the Purge trials: The beginnings of new opposition. The Kirov assassination. Repression in early 1935. Repression continues, 1935-1936. The first Moscow trial, 1936. The fall of Yagoda and promotion of Yezhov. Trial of the "Parallel Center". The February-March Plenum of 1937. Trial of the "anti-Soviet right-Trotskyite bloc". The fraudulence of the Moscow show trials. Mass repression of former oppositionists. Trotsky, 1936-1940 ; 6. Assault on party and state cadres, 1937-1938: The assault on cadres of the central party, government, and economic institutions. The death of Sergo Ordzhonikidze. The death of Nadezhda Alliluyeva. The fate of others close to Lenin. The assault on cadres in the provinces and union republics. repression in the trade unions and Komsomol. Destruction of the cadres of the Red Army. Repression in the NKVD, the courts, and the procuracy. Repression of Comintern activists and members of non-Soviet communist parties. Repression among the scientific and technical intelligentsia. Repression in literature and the arts. Repression among the populace at large ; 7. Rehabilitation and repression, 1938-1941: Yezhov's replacement by Beria. Beria's political career. Partial rehabilitations, 1939-1941. International response to the Repression of 1936-1938 ; 8. Illegal methods of investigation and confinement: Torture. The farce of a trial; jails and prisoner transports. The "corrective" labor camps. NKVD personnel : their conduct and responsibility -- pt. 3. Stalinism : its nature and causes: 9. The problem of Stalin's responsibility: Stalin's leading role in the Repression of 1936-1938. Was Stalin "deceived"? Was Stalin mentally ill? The myth of Stalin's "Permanent Revolution". The myth of Stalin's "National Revolution". The myth of Stalin's "Anti-communist revolution". Was Stalin a police agent? Stalin's personality and the motives for his crimes ; 10. Other causes of mass repression: The chain reaction of arrests. The concept of "political crime". Mass participation in the Repression ; 11. Conditions facilitating Stalin's usurpation of power: Posing the problem. Again on the Stalin cult. The absence of glasnost and freedom of criticism. The domestic and international situation. Centralization and length of term in office. The Bolshevik Party's political monopoly. Perversion of Lenin's concept of party unity. Stalin's personal control over the agencies of repression. Ends and means in the socialist revolution. Incomprehension and lack of solidarity. Bureaucratization and degeneration. Conservatism and dogmatism in some revolutionary cadres. The socialist state in theory and practice. Lack of effective popular control. Insufficient education, culture, and democratic tradition -- pt. 4. Some consequences of Stalin's personal dictatorship: 12. Errors in diplomacy and war: Stalin's foreign policy, 1939-40. War with Finland. Stalin's military-strategic blunder of 1941. Stalin as a military leader. Repression during the war ; 13. Crimes and mistakes of the postwar period: Repression after the war. Repression in the "people's democracies". Weakening the worker-peasant alliance. Official anti-Semitism ; 14. The impact of Stalinism on science and art: The social sciences. The belittling of Lenin's role. Stalin's theoretical "legacy". The natural sciences. Art and literature ; 15. Socialism and pseudosocialism: The dominance of bureaucracy. Political sectarianism. Hypocrisy. Pseudosocialism

Conclusion: Stalin's last years. The problem of assessing Stalin's record

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